Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Windy welcome to Chapin

With a NW forecast in the upper 20s, we decided to finally go windsurfing in Chapin today. Well, the actual wind was a bit higher:

We windsurfed from 10:20 to 11:40, Nina on 76 l/3.7 m and I on 82 l/4.2. High tide was at 12:40, and we had a bit of shore break in the last 30 minutes. The last time I went out, it took me quite to few minutes to make it through. Nina, who had a decent first run, did not get through the shore break on her second try, and decided to cut the session short. We went for a lovely lunch at the Optimist Cafe, checked out a possible alternative launch spot that did not look good, and then went back to Chapin. By then, the temperature had dropped a few degrees and was barely above 40 now, and the condition report from a windsurfer who came in was pretty bad ("very gusty and way too choppy"), so we just took some pictures and called it a day. Here are a few random shots:








After getting back home and checking the wind readings, I noticed that today's wind averages (35 mph) and gusts (44 mph) were the highest that I have recorded for any of my 164 session since 2009 - just by a mile or so, but still. In that perspective, the choppiness really was not so bad at all; nor it is too surprising that the 4.2 sail sometimes felt a bit big. What a windy welcome!